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Review: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)
I think the story of MGS2 left less of an impact on me than the first MGS, but MGS2 really went off with its analyses of the age of information, which was unexpected but not that bad. That being said, the story of MGS2 was still a bit convoluted, and I think it could've worked with a few parts taken out. So overall, good, but I think MGS1 was more interesting and cleaner (i.e. less distractions).
I watched CenterStrain01's walkthrough series here.
Spoilers.
Story
The story had a prologue with Solid Snake on a mission to infiltrate a tanker and take pictures of a new model of Metal Gear. Otacon aided him but at the end of the mission, Revolver Ocelot became possessed with Liquid Snake and took the Metal Gear with him.
The main part of the story was focused around a soldier called Jack, assigned a code name Raiden. He had to save the president, but as he went further into the mission, more and more conspiracies were uncovered.
There was a group of twelve people called the Patriots who were actually the true rules of the country, and wanted to control the flow of information. Honestly, I started losing track of what was going on towards the end as there were a lot of names being thrown around. That is the nature of MGS cutscenes, which always have a lot of information.
After the end of the story, Raiden and Solid Snake parted ways. Raiden was a former child soldier who was raised by Solidus Snake, and he now had a chance to live his life the way he wanted to.
As for Solid Snake, he and Otacon tried to track down the Patriots, only to find out that they'd been dead for 100 years. This ending was a huge cliffhanger. I have to wonder whether it gets resolved in MGS3, which is supposed to be a prequel.
I have to bring up the romance aspects of the story which were insanely shoehorned in. We learned more and more about Raiden's relationship with Rose throughout the game, but it unfolded in a pretty cringey way. As well, Rose was pretty unprofessional and just kind of annoying in general? She was super peeved about Raiden and Emma getting close and like ??? lady they are literally trying to escape death.
Otacon and Emma's side story was something that I think would've worked with a little more information. I think it's implied that Otacon and Emma had feelings for each other, but at the very end, after Emma died, Otacon dropped the bomb that he had an affair with his stepmom, Emma's mom. It just came out of nowhere, and given that Otacon is now supposed to be a series regular, I think his story would've been one that needed some more meat to it.
On the other hand, I didn't really care much for the villains' stories, including Fortune, Vamp, etc. They came up often, but since there was already so much information, towards the end of the game I felt that the game could've cut some of that stuff out to keep the story a little more organized.
Overall, the story definitely had some good and interesting points, but there were also a lot of really random side plots that kept it from being a tight story.
Presentation
Visuals
The colour scheme of the entire game was very bland, which is usually the case in Metal Gear, but it does get depressing after a while.
Voice acting
The version that I watched had English voice acting, and it was kind of overacted. I know David Hayter is kind of universally loved as the voice actor for Snake, but frankly I still felt that he was overacting like all the other voice actors.
During the radio calls between Raiden and others, he'd sometimes interject over the other person. I'm not sure if this was something that was built into the conversation, or whether it was a player control. In any case, it was sometimes distracting.
Characters
Raiden/Jack the Ripper
I'd say that Raiden was the main character of the game. Because he was a new character who was only loosely linked to the already established lore of Metal Gear, I think he didn't really have much presence. As we saw in the very end, Raiden's story was really more focused on his own journey as an individual rather than working with Solid Snake. I have seen that he returns in MGS4, but as of MGS2, it's hard to see him as an involved character in the MGS franchise.
Raiden was orphaned and raised by Solidus Snake to be a child soldier. However, he'd left this past behind and tried to live life as a normal person.
The events of MGS2 were supposed to be a "simulation" that was to replicate a perfect soldier like Solid Snake by staging a mission similar to Shadow Moses. Raiden's "Big Boss" was Solidus Snake, and he eventually defeated him in the end.
At the end of the game, Raiden reconciled with Rose despite the fact that she'd initially approached him on orders from the Patriots. She was pregnant with his child, so they were looking forward to starting a family. Raiden also did some reflection on the kind of information that was not contained in DNA, and the importance of passing on such information to future generations.
Solid Snake
Solid Snake was assumed to have died in the prologue mission to snap photos of the Metal Gear, but in Raiden's mission, we saw that he was very much alive.
Solid Snake was in the know regarding the Patriots from the get go, and took advantage of Raiden during the mission due to his lack of information.
By the end of the game, Solid Snake was still focused on the Patriots, and with Otacon, discovered that they'd died 100 years prior.
Hal "Otacon" Emmerich
Otacon was the tech bro for Solid Snake. In this game, we learned more about his back story. He'd gotten information from whom he suspected was his stepsister and that's what spurred Solid Snake to check out the Metal Gear at the beginning of the game.
We learned more about Otacon and Emma, and it was pretty clear that they had some sort of forbidden love, as they were technically siblings. Otacon revealed after Emma's death that he'd had an affair with his stepmom, and that's why he had to abandon the family. I'll be honest, I felt like all of this baggage dropped out of nowhere. I felt it would've worked better if these family matters were more relevant to the story. But if we remove all of this baggage, and Otacon and Emma were just estranged stepsiblings, the story would've worked just as well. I guess the writers decided to take advantage of an estranged siblings opportunity to write something as messed up as possible.
In terms of what happened in the epilogue, I think we can expect Otacon to continue being Solid Snake's research man in future games.
Olga Gurlukovich
We met Olga in the prologue mission when she was working for her dad to steal Metal Gear. She appeared in Raiden's mission as a double agent. She was reluctantly also working for the Patriots as they had her child. In the end, she was killed.
Olga's story was another that I felt the story could've cut down or cut out. I didn't care much for her character from the onset, and like Otacon, we got a lot of information about Olga dropped on us.
Revolver Ocelot
Revolver Ocelot had Liquid Snake's arm attached onto his body, and that was how Liquid Snake was able to possess him at times.
Later on in Raiden's mission, he was apparently working with Solidus, but was later revealed to be working for the Patriots, and then Liquid Snake possessed his entire body. Basically Liquid Snake was making use of Revolver Ocelot's intel to carry out his own intentions.
I can see how Revolver Ocelot's character makes sense, but as you can see from my description, his situation got confusing.
Liquid Snake
Liquid's intention was apparently to use Revolver Ocelot to get an in with the Patriots and then turn against them. I can't quite remember what happened to Liquid/Revolver Ocelot, but I think he got away, to come back another day.
Solidus Snake
Solidus was another clone of Big Boss. I honestly don't know why the writers didn't go with Vapor Snake, but I guess he wasn't as important enough a character so that's why he got Solidus.
Anyway, he had killed Raiden's parents and then raised him to be a child soldier. So he does have relevance to Raiden, but it's hard to connect him to the rest of the MGS story with Solid and Liquid, despite being another clone.
Emma Emmerich
The Emma sidequest was kind of wild. We learned more and more about Emma and Otacon and it just got stranger and stranger. I've already discussed this so I won't do so again. There was also that side-side plot with Rose getting jealous over Raiden getting close with Emma when they were literally in the middle of trying to escape a life or death situation.
I guess it made sense that Emma would be someone that Otacon trusted very much but was estranged with. Thus, Otacon receiving a random message but trusting it wholeheartedly would make sense with that logic. And EE being someone who worked with Metal Gear (in this case, Arsenal Gear), and had enough insider information to see its dangers.
She died at the end of the game, and we saw that Otacon was pretty heartbroken. Emma had left behind a talking bird, which Otacon took with him.
Others
The villains had their own side stories, but as I mentioned there was just too much going on for me to appreciate another story. Fortune's story about dodging every bullet was very cool though.
Themes
Identity
We learned more and more about Raiden's personal story during the game. By the end of the game, he'd been used by so many parties that he wasn't really sure who he was anymore.
However, with Solid Snake's encouragement, he realized that now he had the option to be the kind of person he wanted to be, rather than the kind of person he was told to be.
Raiden did some reflection at the end of the game about the kind of legacy he wanted to leave behind, not only in terms of physical DNA, but what he would teach to his baby.
Censorship
As mentioned on the Wikipedia page, it was quite surprising how relevant the Patriots' control of information was to the current day era of "fake news." The concept of controlling people by controlling the truth was very current and modern. It was also rather deep for a video game of that time, as most people are probably only coming into this game for some fun action and stealth as opposed to a political philosophy discussion.
Non-DNA Legacy
One of the messages that the game left us with was the ways in which legacies could be left. DNA was the obvious one, but the discussion that was to be had was relating to information and other such things that could not be communicated in chromosomes.
Solid, Liquid, and Solidus all had Big Boss' DNA and were his legacies, but the three of them could not be further away from each other in terms of their ideologies. Thus, the way they interpreted themselves as Big Boss' legacy were all reliant on their upbringing (i.e. nurture over nature).
The plan to replicate Shadow Moses to create another Snake is related to this concept of DNA not ensuring personality. Since DNA did not account for all of Snake's superior soldier skills, replicating a mission was meant to condition one's behaviour to do so. Raiden was chosen as he refused to accept his past, so his emotional baggage wouldn't stop him from going through the same motions that Solid Snake did at Shadow Moses. However, Raiden did not become the super soldier as over the course of the story, he learned more about the truth of what was happening, which obviously affected how he interpreted his mission.
Solid Snake and Raiden both rebelled against their teachers, Big Boss and Solidus Snake. These are examples of a legacies "going rogue." Big Boss and Solidus Snake had intended to use their underlings, and it left negative impressions on Solid Snake and Raiden as they discovered the truth. In both of these situations, we saw how Solid Snake and Raiden deviated from the path ("legacy") that was intended for them.
Overall
The story for MGS2 was kind of all over the place. Even my write up feels all over the place because I sort of lost track of what was going on. Because of that, I think MGS1 had better presentation overall, and had fewer distractions to ensure a tighter story.
I watched CenterStrain01's walkthrough series here.
Spoilers.
Story
The story had a prologue with Solid Snake on a mission to infiltrate a tanker and take pictures of a new model of Metal Gear. Otacon aided him but at the end of the mission, Revolver Ocelot became possessed with Liquid Snake and took the Metal Gear with him.
The main part of the story was focused around a soldier called Jack, assigned a code name Raiden. He had to save the president, but as he went further into the mission, more and more conspiracies were uncovered.
There was a group of twelve people called the Patriots who were actually the true rules of the country, and wanted to control the flow of information. Honestly, I started losing track of what was going on towards the end as there were a lot of names being thrown around. That is the nature of MGS cutscenes, which always have a lot of information.
After the end of the story, Raiden and Solid Snake parted ways. Raiden was a former child soldier who was raised by Solidus Snake, and he now had a chance to live his life the way he wanted to.
As for Solid Snake, he and Otacon tried to track down the Patriots, only to find out that they'd been dead for 100 years. This ending was a huge cliffhanger. I have to wonder whether it gets resolved in MGS3, which is supposed to be a prequel.
I have to bring up the romance aspects of the story which were insanely shoehorned in. We learned more and more about Raiden's relationship with Rose throughout the game, but it unfolded in a pretty cringey way. As well, Rose was pretty unprofessional and just kind of annoying in general? She was super peeved about Raiden and Emma getting close and like ??? lady they are literally trying to escape death.
Otacon and Emma's side story was something that I think would've worked with a little more information. I think it's implied that Otacon and Emma had feelings for each other, but at the very end, after Emma died, Otacon dropped the bomb that he had an affair with his stepmom, Emma's mom. It just came out of nowhere, and given that Otacon is now supposed to be a series regular, I think his story would've been one that needed some more meat to it.
On the other hand, I didn't really care much for the villains' stories, including Fortune, Vamp, etc. They came up often, but since there was already so much information, towards the end of the game I felt that the game could've cut some of that stuff out to keep the story a little more organized.
Overall, the story definitely had some good and interesting points, but there were also a lot of really random side plots that kept it from being a tight story.
Presentation
Visuals
The colour scheme of the entire game was very bland, which is usually the case in Metal Gear, but it does get depressing after a while.
Voice acting
The version that I watched had English voice acting, and it was kind of overacted. I know David Hayter is kind of universally loved as the voice actor for Snake, but frankly I still felt that he was overacting like all the other voice actors.
During the radio calls between Raiden and others, he'd sometimes interject over the other person. I'm not sure if this was something that was built into the conversation, or whether it was a player control. In any case, it was sometimes distracting.
Characters
Raiden/Jack the Ripper
I'd say that Raiden was the main character of the game. Because he was a new character who was only loosely linked to the already established lore of Metal Gear, I think he didn't really have much presence. As we saw in the very end, Raiden's story was really more focused on his own journey as an individual rather than working with Solid Snake. I have seen that he returns in MGS4, but as of MGS2, it's hard to see him as an involved character in the MGS franchise.
Raiden was orphaned and raised by Solidus Snake to be a child soldier. However, he'd left this past behind and tried to live life as a normal person.
The events of MGS2 were supposed to be a "simulation" that was to replicate a perfect soldier like Solid Snake by staging a mission similar to Shadow Moses. Raiden's "Big Boss" was Solidus Snake, and he eventually defeated him in the end.
At the end of the game, Raiden reconciled with Rose despite the fact that she'd initially approached him on orders from the Patriots. She was pregnant with his child, so they were looking forward to starting a family. Raiden also did some reflection on the kind of information that was not contained in DNA, and the importance of passing on such information to future generations.
Solid Snake
Solid Snake was assumed to have died in the prologue mission to snap photos of the Metal Gear, but in Raiden's mission, we saw that he was very much alive.
Solid Snake was in the know regarding the Patriots from the get go, and took advantage of Raiden during the mission due to his lack of information.
By the end of the game, Solid Snake was still focused on the Patriots, and with Otacon, discovered that they'd died 100 years prior.
Hal "Otacon" Emmerich
Otacon was the tech bro for Solid Snake. In this game, we learned more about his back story. He'd gotten information from whom he suspected was his stepsister and that's what spurred Solid Snake to check out the Metal Gear at the beginning of the game.
We learned more about Otacon and Emma, and it was pretty clear that they had some sort of forbidden love, as they were technically siblings. Otacon revealed after Emma's death that he'd had an affair with his stepmom, and that's why he had to abandon the family. I'll be honest, I felt like all of this baggage dropped out of nowhere. I felt it would've worked better if these family matters were more relevant to the story. But if we remove all of this baggage, and Otacon and Emma were just estranged stepsiblings, the story would've worked just as well. I guess the writers decided to take advantage of an estranged siblings opportunity to write something as messed up as possible.
In terms of what happened in the epilogue, I think we can expect Otacon to continue being Solid Snake's research man in future games.
Olga Gurlukovich
We met Olga in the prologue mission when she was working for her dad to steal Metal Gear. She appeared in Raiden's mission as a double agent. She was reluctantly also working for the Patriots as they had her child. In the end, she was killed.
Olga's story was another that I felt the story could've cut down or cut out. I didn't care much for her character from the onset, and like Otacon, we got a lot of information about Olga dropped on us.
Revolver Ocelot
Revolver Ocelot had Liquid Snake's arm attached onto his body, and that was how Liquid Snake was able to possess him at times.
Later on in Raiden's mission, he was apparently working with Solidus, but was later revealed to be working for the Patriots, and then Liquid Snake possessed his entire body. Basically Liquid Snake was making use of Revolver Ocelot's intel to carry out his own intentions.
I can see how Revolver Ocelot's character makes sense, but as you can see from my description, his situation got confusing.
Liquid Snake
Liquid's intention was apparently to use Revolver Ocelot to get an in with the Patriots and then turn against them. I can't quite remember what happened to Liquid/Revolver Ocelot, but I think he got away, to come back another day.
Solidus Snake
Solidus was another clone of Big Boss. I honestly don't know why the writers didn't go with Vapor Snake, but I guess he wasn't as important enough a character so that's why he got Solidus.
Anyway, he had killed Raiden's parents and then raised him to be a child soldier. So he does have relevance to Raiden, but it's hard to connect him to the rest of the MGS story with Solid and Liquid, despite being another clone.
Emma Emmerich
The Emma sidequest was kind of wild. We learned more and more about Emma and Otacon and it just got stranger and stranger. I've already discussed this so I won't do so again. There was also that side-side plot with Rose getting jealous over Raiden getting close with Emma when they were literally in the middle of trying to escape a life or death situation.
I guess it made sense that Emma would be someone that Otacon trusted very much but was estranged with. Thus, Otacon receiving a random message but trusting it wholeheartedly would make sense with that logic. And EE being someone who worked with Metal Gear (in this case, Arsenal Gear), and had enough insider information to see its dangers.
She died at the end of the game, and we saw that Otacon was pretty heartbroken. Emma had left behind a talking bird, which Otacon took with him.
Others
The villains had their own side stories, but as I mentioned there was just too much going on for me to appreciate another story. Fortune's story about dodging every bullet was very cool though.
Themes
Identity
We learned more and more about Raiden's personal story during the game. By the end of the game, he'd been used by so many parties that he wasn't really sure who he was anymore.
However, with Solid Snake's encouragement, he realized that now he had the option to be the kind of person he wanted to be, rather than the kind of person he was told to be.
Raiden did some reflection at the end of the game about the kind of legacy he wanted to leave behind, not only in terms of physical DNA, but what he would teach to his baby.
Censorship
As mentioned on the Wikipedia page, it was quite surprising how relevant the Patriots' control of information was to the current day era of "fake news." The concept of controlling people by controlling the truth was very current and modern. It was also rather deep for a video game of that time, as most people are probably only coming into this game for some fun action and stealth as opposed to a political philosophy discussion.
Non-DNA Legacy
One of the messages that the game left us with was the ways in which legacies could be left. DNA was the obvious one, but the discussion that was to be had was relating to information and other such things that could not be communicated in chromosomes.
Solid, Liquid, and Solidus all had Big Boss' DNA and were his legacies, but the three of them could not be further away from each other in terms of their ideologies. Thus, the way they interpreted themselves as Big Boss' legacy were all reliant on their upbringing (i.e. nurture over nature).
The plan to replicate Shadow Moses to create another Snake is related to this concept of DNA not ensuring personality. Since DNA did not account for all of Snake's superior soldier skills, replicating a mission was meant to condition one's behaviour to do so. Raiden was chosen as he refused to accept his past, so his emotional baggage wouldn't stop him from going through the same motions that Solid Snake did at Shadow Moses. However, Raiden did not become the super soldier as over the course of the story, he learned more about the truth of what was happening, which obviously affected how he interpreted his mission.
Solid Snake and Raiden both rebelled against their teachers, Big Boss and Solidus Snake. These are examples of a legacies "going rogue." Big Boss and Solidus Snake had intended to use their underlings, and it left negative impressions on Solid Snake and Raiden as they discovered the truth. In both of these situations, we saw how Solid Snake and Raiden deviated from the path ("legacy") that was intended for them.
Overall
The story for MGS2 was kind of all over the place. Even my write up feels all over the place because I sort of lost track of what was going on. Because of that, I think MGS1 had better presentation overall, and had fewer distractions to ensure a tighter story.